"In a recording studio, five mothers read the testimonies of other anonymous mothers and confide in each other, exposing their regrets about motherhood.
On a fantasized island, three of them are locked up in an open-air prison. They are watched and forced to do hard labor.
In the recording studio, these mothers make the decision to speak out, to read the testimonies of other women, to speak for others and to bear witness in person. They have the courage to speak out, to record it and to leave a trace. It's no longer a matter of individual, individualistic speech; it's the circulation of speech.
At the same time as words are set free in the studio, this fantasy world opens onto an island, a mental prison, a metaphor for the injunctions in which they feel trapped. In this open-air mental prison, they are monitored and forced to perform hard labor - washing cloths in a salty sea, drying them, folding them before they are taken away, like an alienating loop.
Mater Frioul, directed by Fatima Bianchi, and co-written with Séverine Mathieu, is an auteur film that oscillates between documentary and fiction, highlighting the unspoken issues of motherhood. It attempts to put social injunctions into images, while questioning a seemingly established model of motherhood.
This one-week residency follows on from a previous one, where sound and music creation work was carried out in collaboration with composer Alesssandro Bosetti and double bass player Charlotte Testu. This time, we're actually shooting part of the film. Over the next few days, we'll be concentrating on the testimonies of the mothers - those present in the studio, and all the others, anonymous, whose stories will be read and recorded.
Production
La Société du Sensible (France) - Clothilde Bunod, producer ; Careof (Italy) - Marata Cereda, producer
Support
ArteVisione ; Région SUD Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur ; SCAM - Brouillon d'un rêve ; Italian Concil ; Fonds de Soutien Audiovisuel du CNC ; France 3 PACA
Fatima Bianchi
Director
Fatima Bianchi is a filmmaker at the crossroads of documentary and video art. She seeks to create new narratives based on different forms of temporality. She uses reality as a starting point to generate a form of documentary that escapes the trap of representation, to create new languages from existing systems. Her research is inspired by the events of everyday life, starting from the experience of the individual as a unique phenomenon who grows up in a community and makes it grow in turn. The artist sensitively highlights the inventiveness of everyday life, while underlining the social and even political significance of spontaneous or choreographed gestures.
Alongside her work as a director, she accompanies numerous projects as an editor. She graduated from the New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan in 2008. Her films and installations have been shown at numerous festivals and galleries, including Visions du Réel (SWITZERLAND), Cinema Vérité Teheran (IRAN), Open City Documentary (UK), Kino Panorama Roma (IT), ZagrebDox (CR), Filmmaker Festival (IT), Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale (TIRANA), Centre d'Art Contemporain Briancon (FR), Fondation Merz in Turin (IT), Glogauair Gallery in Berlin. Her film Notturno was selected for the International Critics' Week at the 73rd Venice Biennale. Her editing credits include Aswang by Alyx Arumpac (Best Editing Famas Digital Philippine 2020).
Fatima Bianchi
writer, director
Alessandro Bosetti
composer
Myriam Pruvot
vocal creation
Séverine Mathieu
co-author, 1st assistant director
Clothilde Bunod
producer
Laura Delle Piane
chief operator
Pierre Armand
Chief OPS
Christine Dancausse
sound assistant
Blandine Papillon
Kelly Martins
Maryam Kaba
Fabienne Lacoude
Justine Assaf
mothers, spokespersons